There are many free Revit plugins on the market. Based on our personal experience as well as conversations with hundreds of people who have tried free and inexpensive plugins, we strongly discourage people from using them. Although a plugin may have a low upfront cost, it may cost a fortune in terms of time spent trying to get it to perform as described. And often, it never does. Not only does this frustrate users, if they downloaded the software in hopes of solving a pressing issue, they may miss a deadline and frustrate customers as well.

The Monetary Cost of Ideate Software Plugins for Revit

Developing, marketing, and supporting Revit plugins is complicated, and Ideate Software does it extremely well. While we like to focus on the value of our software, we understand that the monetary cost is important for budgeting, plus it creates a basis from which to determine the cost savings achieved.

Please visit our Bundles page for current pricing on our standard one-year subscriptions for single users, multiple users, and enterprise licensing, as well as our special promotions, which at the time of this post, include six-month get-to-know-us bundles for single and multiple users as well as the option to add Ideate Automation. Subscriptions to individual products are also available. For pricing information, go to our online store and click on each product’s name.

The Reasons Ideate Software Products are Top Revit Plugins

The whole reason Ideate Software is in business is to help companies in the architecture, engineering, construction, and owner-operator industries get the most out of their Revit software. It’s not an add-on to our business. It’s not a secondary or tertiary area of focus. It’s what we do! We are an Autodesk Authorized Developer and a member of the Autodesk Developer Network, meaning that we adhere to strict guidelines established by Autodesk and that they trust us to deliver products and services that strengthen their products and their reputation.

Here are some factors that contribute to our designation as a top Revit plugin developer:

1. We create an atmosphere that attracts top talent. A people-first philosophy in which every person is treated with respect, encouraged to share their ideas, and recognized for their successes has led to several people staying with the company for decades as well as new people with outstanding skills joining us. For examples, read this press release about Rahul Verma, who celebrated his 20-year anniversary with Ideate in 2021, and this press release that announces three new hires who brought their talents to Ideate Software within the past year. 
    
2. We develop plugins that Revit users want. We don’t ever think we know what functionality to work on next. We know what to do because we listen to Revit users. Because we have been in business for so long, we have a solid base of customers who tell us what they are working on, describe limitations in Revit that they’d like addressed, and provide candid thoughts on our product development ideas before we get to software development. As a business, our goal of course is to attract new customers, so we don’t just rely on our existing customers for direction. We tune into Autodesk Revit forums, we attend industry events across the world, and we ask for thoughts on product development after each of our webinars, which are open to the public and free of charge. 
    
3. We put all our products and enhancements through rigorous testing. Our software development team takes great pride in their work. They test their work extensively before releasing new products or enhancements to existing products by providing them to the large group of people in our Beta Test Group who test them in real-world situations. We take their feedback to heart, making adjustments as needed to ensure each product works as described and performs a valuable function.
    
4. We provide meaningful updates at least once a year. We are not a one-and-done company. Every year, we align our software with the new version of Revit, and we make customer-requested and process-improvement enhancements that bring additional value to subscribers. We highlight the enhancements in press releases, lead webinars on the updates, post videos on our YouTube channel, and put step-by-step workflow instructions in our online help files. Of course our top support staff are always available to offer assistance. Here is a video highlighting the enhancements in our May 2023 release:
   
   

Ideate Software’s Revit Plugins – An Overview

Here are highlights of our BIM plugins for Revit. Click on the links for more information.

• Ideate BIMLink – Easily edit vast amounts of Revit data by using Ideate BIMLink to import/export Revit data to Microsoft Excel for editing. In addition to robust editing, you can create many Revit elements as well as manage workflows that just aren’t easy or even possible within standard Revit. A small sampling of these varied workflows includes the ability to swap Revit elements, easily manage Revit parameters, rename Revit elements, and flexibly manage Revit sheet revision workflows and sheet/view sets. Ideate BIMLink includes powerful filtering and sorting options to manage and extract the exact Revit data to modify. 
   
• Ideate Explorer – Decrease the time spent on model management by using Ideate Explorer to find and delete incorrect, obsolete, and hidden problem items, including DWGs. Ideate Explorer comes with four additional tools that allow you to manage warnings, navigate through view-based elements, search on parameters, and filter model elements based on specific parametric conditions. 
   
• Ideate Sticky – Easily link, import, integrate, and format non-BIM data into your Revit projects with Ideate Sticky. It combines the ease and flexibility of Excel, Word, and PDF editing with the convenience of a sticky note. Because the documents are live-linked, the Revit files automatically update when the original document is changed. 
   
• Ideate StyleManager - Address the challenges that arise when Revit users load or import content into the model and the corresponding styles automatically come with the content. While management of styles in Revit can be time consuming and risky, it’s easy with Ideate StyleManager, which allows users to analyze, merge, or delete non-standard styles. 
   
• IdeateApps – Streamline time-consuming repetitive tasks with the 10 tools that come with IdeateApps. Developed for both daily Revit users and BIM managers, IdeateApps will put hours back in your day while improving the quality of your Revit models.

In addition to developing the five plugins above to solve persistent problems in architecture, engineering, and construction, and owner-operator workflows, we developed Ideate Automation to boost the power of our Revit plugins by running time-intensive activities in the background. Learn more here. 

Stay Connected

Learn more about our top Revit addons.

Check us out on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

If you have any questions, reach out to us. We are here to help you understand and use our Revit plugin solutions. 
 

Revit software enables some revision capabilities. Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Sticky take over where Revit leaves off.

• Do you need revisions that aren’t in Revision Clouds to appear in the Titleblock?
  If yes, in Revit you must update the “Revision on Sheet” option within each sheet view.
• Do you need a schedule of all revisions on each sheet?
  If yes, chances are that you have created a workaround, because Revit only lists the latest revision.

While the methods above can get the job done, they take a lot of time and they increase the chance of errors.

Watch our short video to see how you can use Ideate BIMLink to aggregate revision information in Microsoft Excel to edit the options in bulk and Ideate Sticky to bring the formatted Excel schedule back into Revit to place onto sheets.

 

You’ll see how the work that has taken you hours if not days can be reduced to just minutes by completing two simple steps.

For implementation services or to learn more about how Ideate BIMLink and Ideate Sticky can help your business, please contact [email protected]

With five Revit plugins and an additional desktop application, including one plugin—IdeateApps—that come with 10 tools, we are often asked which of our products people find most useful. The truth is that there isn’t just one. We know that all the tools on our Revit plugins list are useful because we only develop ones that meet needs expressed by Revit users. 

1. We talk with our customers. Whether they have been with us since we first launched Ideate Explorer in 2008, recently partnered with us when we launched Ideate Automation to boost the power of our plugins, or anywhere in between, we talk with customers.
   • We take the time to understand their needs before selling them a product, and we follow up with them after they have had it for a while to make sure it meets those needs.
   • At the conclusion of every webinar we deliver, we ask attendees to tell us about any challenges they are having in Revit and if there are any features they’d like to see added to our products.
   • We track all calls that come into our Support team and note any issues that our products don’t currently address. Our Software Development team reviews all the data to determine if new functionality or even a completely new product is needed.
   • We work closely with a large group of beta testers who review our updates or new products while they are in the development stage, provide candid feedback, and then verify that everything works as expected before we launch them publicly
      
2. We are part of the Autodesk Community, which offers several ways to connect, find answers, share knowledge, build networks, and more, including the Community Forums, which are product discussion boards:
   • Revit Architecture Forum - Share knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Revit Architecture topics.
   • Revit MEP Forum – Post questions and answers about Revit ducts, piping, plumbing, fire protection, electrical, and more.
   • Revit Structure Forum – Hear from users about how to use this tool to improve collaborations on structural design and engineering tasks.
   • Revit API Forum – Learn about this collection of programs and libraries that helps in building and integrating software to Revit to extend its functionality.
   • Revit Ideas Forum - Share ideas for future product features directly with the Revit team and collaborate on existing suggestions with peers
      
3. We know Revit. Our Software Developers, Support team, Business Development managers, and Customer Success managers know Revit. We are architects, engineers, designers, and others who worked in industry before joining Ideate Software. 
   
   We joined Ideate Software because we know and love BIM and Revit, and we want to help develop, sell, and support products that make them even better. 

Reasons our Revit Plugins are Useful

Here’s a quick overview of how our customers benefit from our addons for Revit. Architecture, engineering, and construction companies as well as owner-operators use our Revit addons to streamline activities, improve model health, and enhance model design. 

Quickly find and delete incorrect, obsolete, and hidden problem items—even imported or linked DWG’s. Find, refine, and revise elements, including those that aren’t in the Revit project browser. This functionality dramatically decreases the amount of time spent on model management and enhances model performance. Ideate Explorer comes with four additional features that will contribute to you models staying in top working order:

• Warnings Manager – Audit and address Revit warnings ranked by importance. Fix problems using tools in Revit while the Warnings Manager dialog box is open.
• Navigate – Navigate through view-based elements; find unused sheets and views; find and filter legends, schedules, sheets, or views by category and/or keyword; and customize working environments without altering the project browser.
• Query – Search within set parameters for elements like in-place usage, structure usage/area scheme, revisions, unused annotations, and design options. 
• Filters - A dynamic, customizable, and rule-based method to quickly filter Revit model elements based on your specified parametric conditions.

Don’t work inside of Revit to verify and/or edit data one element at a time. Instead, use Ideate BIMLink to export the data you need to review into Microsoft Excel where you can quickly view and accurately manipulate massive amounts of data in seconds. You can then use Ideate BIMLink to import the verified or updated data back into Revit, and the model will immediately update.  

Share accurate and formatted non-BIM data with your Revit teams by live-linking Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and PDF documents to the Revit file with Ideate Sticky. These “stickies” are easy to read, look nice, and can be easily updated within Revit when changes are made to the original files. Whether it’s building codes, consultant data, abbreviation lists, general notes, or any of the many other non-BIM data critical to a project’s success, you can be sure your team always has the current information. 

Eliminate problems caused by copying/pasting data from one Revit file to another when styles associated with the original file get copied along with the data. This can clog up the model with incorrect information that can take a long time to remove if working in Revit. You have to remove it, because extraneous data can create model performance problems. With Ideate StyleManager, you can quickly analyze, merge, and delete non-standard Revit styles, and you can use it to see view filters applied to views and to clean object and line styles and patterns, text, fonts, parameters, and more. 

Stop spending so much time on tedious tasks in Revit that, when performed on large complex models, can contribute to mistakes, rework, and frustrations. Automate hundreds of common tasks with the 10 tools that come in the IdeateApps collection: Ideate SpellCheck, Ideate Align, Ideate Clone, Ideate ViewCreator, Ideate SheetManager, Ideate Annotate, Ideate XRay, Ideate ReNumber, Ideate SmartDelete, and Ideate QuickSelect. 

Run time-intensive BIM tasks silently in the background on this desktop application while you spend your time on more meaningful work with Ideate Automation. Start it manually or schedule it to run at a convenient time, even overnight. Ideate Automation can increase your productivity, eliminate the need to train staff on repetitive tasks, and ensure task outcomes are highly predictable, free of user errors, and standardized. Use Ideate Automation to: 

• Export key Revit model health data
• Create document issue records
• Prepare COBie data drops
• Generate quantity take-off data 
• Generate regular, automated PDF exports
• Deliver CSV reports on key Revit family and project metrics

Stay Connected

Learn more about our top Revit addons.

Check us out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

If you have any questions, reach out to us. We are here to help you understand and use our Revit plugin solutions. 
 

Environmental Systems Design’s Digital Practice Leader Samir Abdelmawla delivered an engaging session called, “Arsenal of Revit Tools for the MEP Team” at the 2023 BILT North America Conference in Dallas, Texas. He featured several Revit add-on tools for the MEP team, and many of those tools were from Ideate Software!

“I am a strong believer of the tools developed by Ideate Software. A number of these tools are helping our engineers on their daily tasks. I am pleased to showcase how powerful they are for many MEP workflows and how easy they are to use,” said Samir.

Here is the information about Ideate Software tools that Samir featured in his presentation:

1. Ideate Sticky 
   • Successfully get Excel spreadsheets to Revit
   • Starting with Revit 2020, Revit supported inserting PDFs to a model, however it only allows for one page at time. Ideate Sticky can place selected pages and maintain links to the source PDF.
     
      
2. Ideate BIMLink – Edit various MEP data and schedules in Excel and then import the data back to Revit. Editing in Excel offers the speed of copy/paste, fill down/across, concatenate data, and easily search/replace.
   
   
   
   Also, with Ideate BIMLink, users can create definitions from a wealth of provided Libraries by category or by schedule: Export the data to Excel, edit, then import it back to Revit. Ideate BIMLink highlights changes for review before making them in the Revit model.
   
   
    
3. IdeateApps
    
   • Ideate XRay – Understand why a Revit element is not visible within a specific view.
     • Fix
     • Show how to fix
     • Get more information
        
   • Ideate XRay gives the options to:
      
   • Ideate ReNumber – Use this tool to number Revit elements by:
      
     • Individual selection
     • Selecting a path
     • Numbering all elements within the active view
        
   • Ideate Align – Coordinate floor plans, legends, schedules, or any other view across multiple Sheets
      
4. Ideate Explorer – Manage model warnings
   
   

Thank you, Samir! We are honored that you included our products in your presentation.

San Francisco, CA, July 12, 2023 – When appointed Information Manager on a major project that required weekly reports to demonstrate the development of Autodesk® Revit® models, Evolve Consultancy, a premier BIM consultancy in the UK, turned to a suite of tools, including Ideate BIMLink. Ideate BIMLink is a Revit productivity tool developed by Ideate Software, an Autodesk AEC Industry Partner and Autodesk Authorized Developer. 

Joseph Frame, an associate with Evolve Consultancy said, “Simplicity is the key. We need anyone to be able to produce and analyse these reports with a minimum of training, as quickly as possible. Ideate BIMLink gives us that ability.”

In the customer success story published by Ideate Software, Joseph Frame and Francesco Pirritano, a consultant with Evolve Consultancy, share the steps they follow to:

The process of reporting starts with a custom link created in Ideate BIMLink to extract the necessary property values from the model.

• Use Ideate BIMLink to select the required properties and categories to be included in the report
   
• Export that data, which includes data from linked Revit models, to an Excel spreadsheet
   
• Calculate the number and percentage of elements against each key performance indicator
   
• Create a summary sheet to show the progression of how the models are developing over time

Francesco Pirritano said, “Ideate BIMLink allows the selection of multiple Revit categories, including both system and loadable families into the scheduled export, something not possible with Autodesk Revit multi-category schedules.”

Read Spotlight on Evolve Consultancy for details and screenshots.

Visit www.ideatesoftware.com to learn how Ideate Software add-ins for Revit help users save time, increase model accuracy, improve deliverables, and elevate design. Give them a try by downloading trial versions or purchasing the bundle for access to Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, IdeateApps, and Ideate StyleManager for six months.
 

About Ideate Software - Ideate Software, an Autodesk AEC Industry Partner and Autodesk Authorized Developer, empowers Revit users to gain unprecedented control over their data. They developed Ideate BIMLink, Ideate Explorer, Ideate Sticky, IdeateApps, and Ideate StyleManager to solve persistent problems in architecture, engineering, and construction, and owner-operator (AECO) workflows. They developed Ideate Automation to boost the power of their Revit plugins by running time-intensive activities in the background.

Autodesk and Autodesk Revit are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries.

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